Legacy
by evieeden
Summary: The sins of the father will always come to light. Advent story written for 9th December.


**Happy 9****th**** December everyone. I hope you're all getting in the festive spirit and that you all enjoy today's advent story offering.**

**Guess who get big thanks for me yet again? That's right! Idealskeptic is once again a total Star (and yes, I meant the capital S). As always, I don't own Twilight.**

**Legacy**

"Mom! Are you in?"

My son's voice called out to me as the front door swung open.

Putting the kettle on, I turned towards the entrance. "In here," I called.

I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall and then my boy appeared, a frown on his face. He was actually dressed for once, in jeans and a t-shirt that looked just a little too small. I supposed it was an improvement given that every time I had seen him lately, he was wandering around half-naked.

He leaned down to absently press a kiss against my forehead before collapsing into one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

He looked tired, but then, ever since he had stumbled back into the house following his four-month disappearance, he had worn a permanent expression of exhaustion.

I could have killed my estranged husband for the burden he had inadvertently passed to my baby boy.

"How are you doing, Sammy?" I asked, my eyes darting over his face and body for any signs that he hadn't been taking care of himself properly. Apart from the creases around his eyes, he didn't look too bad. For a while he had been far too thin. I didn't especially like the girl, but at least his Emily knew how to feed a man.

"I'm okay," he mumbled.

"Here."

Pouring out the hot water, I set a cup of coffee in front of him and then turned towards the fridge, digging out a half-finished lasagne. I put the whole dish into the oven to warm up. If I knew my son at all then I knew he would be hungry.

I was just about to start preparing a side salad to go with it when Sam's hand suddenly shot out to wrap around my wrist, stopping me in my tracks. I gave him the look that only mothers have and he quickly released me.

"Sorry," he apologised.

"Hmmph." I didn't mind if he was here to talk, but big or not, I wasn't about to let him manhandle me.

Grabbing my own coffee, I sat opposite him and waited for him to spill his guts.

"Mom." He raised his head and then paused. "Can I talk to you?"

"You are talking to me," I pointed out.

He glared at me but I merely smiled back at him. What was the point of having children if you couldn't tease them every now and then?

Rubbing a hand over his face tiredly, Sam then gulped down the rest of his drink.

I rose to get him another, but only got halfway up before one of his hands covered mine, staying me.

"Please. We need to talk."

Okay then, I guessed this was much more serious than I thought. I sat back down again and waited for him to begin.

"Mom..." he began and then paused. "I... I need to talk to you... about Embry Call."

My heart immediately sank.

Embry Call. I knew that this would come back to haunt me at some point in my life, but I'd been hoping for some kind of reprieve.

I had nothing against the boy himself. He had been a sweet, quiet child and when I had seen him last month, it had looked like he was growing up to sweet, quiet, young man. Just his presence, however, had the power to hurt a lot of people.

Joshua Uley had a hell of a lot to answer for.

"What about him?"

I wasn't an idiot. I wasn't going to admit to anything if my Sammy didn't already know. I don't think he would've brought the other boy up if he hadn't had some clue though.

Sam twirled his empty cup around between his hands, his shoulders hunched awkwardly. I was almost glad when the timer on the oven went off, providing me with the opportunity to escape my son's scrutiny.

I had just placed the lasagne pan on the side when Sam spoke.

"Is he my brother?"

My fists clenched and I sucked in a sharp breath. Spinning to face my son, I saw him taking in my reaction to his question with wide eyes.

"So, he is," he stated bleakly.

"Sam..." I didn't know what to say or how to explain. I settled for the practical. "Let me get you some food, and don't try to tell me that you're not hungry."

He sat silently behind me as I dished up the food and fetched him some cutlery. I could feel his disapproving stare boring into the back of my head, making my hands shake. Turning, I placed the food in front of him and then reached back into the cupboard for the bottle of whiskey I kept there for emergencies. Something told me I would need it. I poured myself a glass and then retook my seat opposite him.

It was a sign of how disturbed he was that he hadn't even touched his plate yet.

I took a deep gulp of my drink, enjoying the burn as it slid down the back of my throat to my stomach.

"I don't know," I finally said.

"What do you mean 'you don't know'?" Sam asked.

I looked pointedly at his plate and he obediently began to shovel the lasagne into his mouth.

I sighed deeply. "It means exactly what it means, Sammy. I don't know if Embry is your half-brother. Tiffany Call's never spoken about it and I'm certainly not the person to ask her. But if I had to guess, then yes, I would say that you two share a father."

"What makes you think that?" he pressed, taking another mouthful.

"What makes _you_ think it?" I countered. "Where is all this coming from?"

He avoided my eyes and it suddenly hit me as to why my boy was suddenly asking about Embry now.

"Did he phase?" I questioned. "Is that why you're asking me this?"

Sam bolted upright, watching me suspiciously.

"How do you know about that?" he demanded.

"Samuel!" I brought out the big guns. "I don't care if you turn into a giant wolf, but don't you ever talk to me like that again! Ever!" I pointed at him for emphasis.

He subsided back into his chair and slumped down. "I'm sorry." He looked completely dejected.

I reached across the table and gripped one of his hands, squeezing it as tightly as I could.

"I'm sorry too," I whispered.

My poor baby boy. How he suffered.

I felt like I owed him an explanation. "I've always know that the spirit warriors existed, Sammy. I grew up here; I heard the same stories about the Cold Ones as everyone else did. It wasn't hard to guess what the Cullens were when they came back here. Plus, you think your father ever kept his mouth shut about the 'big tribal secret' anytime he came home drunk?"

I shook my head, berating myself. I had vowed when Sam was little not to let him see what I truly thought of his father. Most of the tribe were only too happy to throw Josh's indiscretions in my boy's face, but I had never wanted him to think badly of his father, no matter my own opinion on the man.

"Dad knew?" Sam asked.

I took another glug of my drink.

"He knew," I confirmed. "He was like Billy Black; his grandfather phased in front of him when he was younger so that he would know the stories were real. It was supposed to prepare him, in case..." My voice trailed off. "But of course, he hasn't been around to see you." I rubbed my thumb over the back of his hand. "I'm sorry I didn't realise."

He slid his hand out from under mine, looking away uncomfortably.

"You couldn't have known."

"But I should've." It was something I had thought about time and time again – how I should've looked at my boy and his strange growth spurt and known what was about to happen to him.

It just hadn't occurred to me though, not until he disappeared and I experienced the most frightening months of my life not knowing what had happened to him. After a while even Leah and I had to consider the possibility that my baby was dead and not coming back. A strange, selfish part of me had vaguely hoped that he wasn't lost at all, but had merely taken after Joshua and run out when he got tired of the girl. It did no service to Leah or to my son's character, but at least it would have meant that he was alive.

When he eventually found his way back home, he was bigger, harder, and I knew then what he had become.

But I couldn't help him. He wouldn't let me, wouldn't talk. He just stalked around with a haunted look on his face and the more time passed, the less able I felt to tell him what was happening. Thank the gods for Old Quil visiting.

I had wept nightly for my boy, for the heavy duty that Billy Black and his council of fools had laid upon his shoulders, but there was nothing I could do.

I wished that Sam would come to me, to talk to me, but shortly after he got back he moved out of this house, dumped Leah and that Emily moved right in with him. He never said a word.

I kept an eye on him still – from a distance since he wouldn't let me close anymore.

Other boys joined him: Jared Cameron, always a nice boy, and Paul Lahote, a volatile child, but that was hardly surprising given his upbringing. Each new boy had added more frown lines to my son's face so that I rarely saw him smile anymore.

It was heartbreaking to watch.

Even I was surprised that Embry Call was the latest boy to become a spirit warrior.

"You need to eat," I told him. "Fretting won't keep you full."

He silently obliged me, picking up his fork again. I waited until his mouth was full before I spoke.

"So, Embry Call," I started. "I don't know if you remember when Tiffany first moved to the reservation. You were... four, I think."

I took another sip of my drink and then decided that getting drunk wasn't going to make this any easier. I pushed the glass aside.

"She was already pregnant, of course. Poor little thing. She was your babysitter for a while when she first moved here. She'd had to drop out of school and didn't have any money. I don't think she realised at first who I was – there were lots of Uleys still living on the reservation at that point. I remember that she stopped coming around so often at one point, but as she had just started working at the gift shop then, I just figured she didn't have the spare time to watch over you. Now, when I think about it, I think that that must have been when she realised that Josh and I were married."

Sam looked slightly nauseous. "She was my babysitter?" he spat out.

"Don't you talk about her in that tone of voice, Samuel!" I barked out. "Tiffany Call was just a baby when she came here. She was a good girl and she'd just been thrown out of her home back in Neah Bay. She did what she had to do to survive."

Sam swallowed heavily and then shoved another forkful of lasagne into his mouth, clearly to keep him from saying something that he would regret.

I tried to plead with him to think leniently of Tiffany. "Sam, she's not a bad person. But she was just sixteen when she came here - seventeen when she had Embry - younger than you are now. Imagine if you were in her position, showing up in a strange place searching for your child's father only to find out that he's already married with a kid."

Sam's fists clenched and he shoved his hands under the table when my eyes shot down to them.

"How long have you known?" he bit out.

"I didn't," I explained. "Not really. I always suspected. Tiffany was all alone with her baby so we all helped out. When he was little I noticed that he looked very similar to how you were at that age, but then as he grew up the similarities between you two faded and I thought that I'd just imagined it."

A fond smile crept unbidden across my face.

"Every mother would like to think that her baby's perfect and unique, but the truth is until you're about six months old, you all look alike."

Sam snorted at that, and I was glad that his anger had cooled a little. Joshua may have been the unreliable parent, but it was me that had passed on my temper to our son.

"So I didn't think anything of it after a while."

Sam rested his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers together. "But?" he prompted.

This was where I had to take a deep breath.

"But, in the last few years, especially before you...grew..." I tried to put it delicately, not wanting to upset him anymore. "You could see the resemblance between you again." I shrugged. "It's your eyes, you see. You both have Josh's eyes."

"But you didn't say anything," he protested. "Why didn't you say anything?"

He shot to his feet and began pacing up and down the room.

I took a deep breath. "Because it wasn't my place to, Sammy."

He stopped dead in his tracks, his body beginning to shake.

I stayed where I was but tried not to flinch back from him. I knew what he was, I had seen what he could do – Emily Young's face was enough warning – but at the same time he was my son, and I never wanted him to think that I was afraid of him. My gentle boy.

I waited until he had calmed himself down before I spoke again.

"Tiffany made her decision, either when she came here or when she found out about Joshua, that she didn't want anyone to know who Embry's father was. Maybe she was too ashamed or frightened to talk about it, or maybe..." This next part was hard to say. "Maybe she saw how people talked about us, Sammy, and decided she didn't want her son to be a subject for cruel gossip. I don't know."

Sam's jaw tightened at the reminder of the gossiping. No-one around here led a particularly charmed life and absent parents were fairly common, but Josh had left behind enough spurned lovers and cuckolded husbands to make life very uncomfortable for Sam and I.

They were a bunch of hypocrites, the lot of them

At least Tiffany Call had the good grace to look me in the eyes when I saw her. But then, I would never have blamed her for her situation in the first place.

What Josh thought he was doing messing around with teenage girls was beyond me; it was new low, even for him.

"So you never thought to ask?" Sam questioned. I could see the confusion and the lack of understanding in his eyes. I supposed I shouldn't be too surprised. After all, I had the last four years to come to terms with the fact that my husband had fathered another child. Sammy was having all of this dumped on him now.

"I have thought about it," I confessed. "But I don't know what that would achieve. If I'd confronted Tiffany she could have easily lied to me and how would I know any different? It could make things on the reservation very difficult for all of us if I demanded the truth from her and for what? What could I hope to achieve by that?"

I sighed heavily.

I should've known that this would come back to haunt me, but I suppose, like Tiffany Call, I had hoped that no would ever question Embry's parentage. I guessed I just really didn't want to have to face the damage that Josh had done, and I hadn't wanted Sam to have to face it either.

The road to hell...

Sam was watching me quietly, carefully.

The only thing I could do now was try to explain myself. I stared at my empty glass and wished that I'd gotten drunk for this after all.

"I didn't know he would become a spirit warrior. I didn't even consider it."

It was an explanation and an excuse.

Luckily my son accepted it. He sat back down and leaned back heavily.

"Neither did we." He rubbed his hand over his face again. "Shit! I shouldn't even be talking to you about this."

"Language, Samuel!" I chided him. Leaning forward, I tapped him smartly on his hand and he grinned at the familiar reprimand. "You're already talking to me about it anyway. You might as well get it all out in one go."

He cocked his head, considering me for a moment.

His hair was getting long again, You could tell by the way it was beginning to flop forward that it would be in his eyes before long if he didn't cut it back again.

"We believe that the boys to phase so far are ones related to the men who were in the last pack," he finally said.

I nodded. "The last spirit warriors."

It made sense to me.

According to the legends, Levi Uley was one of the last spirit warriors, and my boy was a direct descendent. Paul Lahote was a distant cousin too, although really, it was hard to find people who weren't related to each other on the reservation.

"Jared Cameron's one of the Blacks' cousins, isn't he?" I asked.

Sam started in his chair. "How did you...?" He shook his head. "You noticed that Jared had... changed?" he asked.

"Just because you've moved out of my house, Sammy, pretending you're a grown up, doesn't mean I'm not going to keep an eye on my baby." I pinched his cheek for emphasis and he grimaced at me.

He was almost smiling now though. It was a lot better than I had seen him looking for a while.

"Anyway," he got back to the point, "we were watching out to see if anyone else would phase. Jacob Black's about the right age and he's beginning to shoot up like a weed. Quil Ateara too. Embry was... a surprise."

"I imagine he would be."

We sat in silence for a while.

Sam, no doubt, was probably still assimilating the idea that he had a half-brother. I, in the meantime, was wondering how I could have been so blind as to not see what was right in front of me.

"Sam, you know that even if I was sure... about your father and Embry, I mean... I still wouldn't have thought that he would change too. No matter what you father is..." And there were several things I could think of that would describe Joshua Uley perfectly. "...I would have assumed that Tiffany being Makah would have cancelled out any chance of him becoming a spirit warrior."

He nodded, but didn't reassure me. I supposed at the end of it all, there were no reassurances to give.

Silence fell over us again.

This time it was broken by Sam slithering off his chair crawling across the floor to press his head against my lap. It was what he had always done when he was upset when he was little and as I stroked my hands soothingly through his hair, I couldn't stop the tears that began to stream down my face.

"I'm sorry, Sammy." It was all I could think to say. "I'm so sorry."

Eventually, I calmed down and Sam pulled away from me and stood up.

"Urgh, look at me. I'm a mess." I laughed shakily and grabbed a tissue off the side, turning away to wipe off the evidence of my distress.

It gave both of us time to compose ourselves.

I didn't offer Sam a tissue either, despite that his cheeks were conspicuously damp too. I had learnt long ago that with boys it was best to just pretend everything was normal.

"So, honey, what do you want to do next?"

Sam sighed and leaned against the refrigerator, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I don't know." He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "I don't know what to say to Embry. I don't even know what to say to his mom, especially if she's been lying to him the whole time about who his father is."

Once again I felt compelled to defend Tiffany. She was as much a victim in all this as the rest of us.

"We do what we think is right to protect our children, Sammy."

He nodded, but his mouth thinned. I knew he didn't approve of any of our decisions, but maybe at least he would understand a little more once he had time to think through it all.

"Anyway," he continued, "at least Jared's father is on the council, so he knows what's going on, and Paul's father isn't really interested."

I grimaced at that.

"But Tiffany's already getting on Embry's case about him coming and going at all times. She thinks he's on drugs."

"Do... Would you like me to talk to her?" I asked. "Not only about the wolves, but about Joshua too. This can't be easy for Embry either and maybe it is time for this to finally come out in the open."

It would hurt, that was for sure. I could just imagine the uproar it would cause at this point for Embry to suddenly be revealed as Josh's child. There was going to be fallout whichever way you looked, so I guessed we might as well rip the Band-Aid off all in one go. Get the worst of it over with.

Sam was watching me, the look in his eyes half hopeful and half wary.

"The council says we're not allowed to talk about it with anyone outside them. The wolves, I mean."

I rolled my eyes and put my hands on my hips.

"Samuel Uley, since when have I, or you for that matter, ever listened to that bunch of old idiots?"

He laughed at that. It was lovely to hear.

"Besides, you're not telling her. I am. And you tell Billy Black that if he's got a problem with that then he can come and see me about it."

That point I was firm on.

Sam held his hands up defensively.

"I'm not arguing with you, Mom."

"Good," I declared. "See that you don't."

I smiled at him.

"I'll talk to Tiffany," I reassured him. "You just look after yourself and the rest of those boys."

"I will," he promised.

Stalking forward, he wrapped me in a warm hug before pulling away. I tried not to cling on to him like a limpet. Squeezing my arm one last time, he headed for the door again.

"Sammy."

He turned to face me.

"Come for dinner sometime. I feel like I never get to see you anymore." I swallowed my pride. "Bring Emily too."

He frowned at me. "You don't like Emily," he accused.

"I don't know Emily," I rebutted. "She just appeared one day without warning. And if I don't get to know the girl at some point then I'm never going to like her, am I?"

He pursed his lips and then nodded briefly. "I'll ask her."

"See that you do."

With a wave, he disappeared, and once the door closed behind him, I sank to the floor.

Eyeing up the bottle of whiskey on the counter, I considered getting drunk before going to see Tiffany Call. Maybe I should take it with me for afterwards. Probably both of us would need it by the time we were finished talking.

Oh Joshua, Joshua.

If that man ever set foot upon the reservation again, I was going to make his life hell.

And it would be a pleasure.


End file.
